Rare's Early Years

Future Looks has traced the beginnings of Rare and how they became the biggest SNES development team. The story is interspersed with comments from Rare co-founder, Tim Stamper:

Unfortunately, Nintendo wasn't particularly interested in setting up partnerships with Western development companies at the time.

"We went to Mr. Arakawa and told him that we wanted to make games for Nintendo, and he said fine," says Chris Stamper. "Originally we went to him and asked for the technical specs, but we couldn't get those, so I reverse- engineered the NES. I understood coin-op hardware, so I had a good idea of what the Nintendo actually contained."

"We produced a demo. When Mr. Arakawa saw the demo, he said 'Okay, you have our blessings', and gave us the full specifications."